


Adventures in Solitude

by eponymmouse



Series: Visions [2]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Always-a-girl!Merlin, F/M, Gen, Girl!Merlin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-15
Updated: 2016-07-15
Packaged: 2018-07-24 02:14:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7489389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eponymmouse/pseuds/eponymmouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Merlin allows herself another thought for Camelot, for the beautiful castle she’s heard so much about, for the glittering court and all the people she'll never meet. She takes a long, hard look at her dream, and casts it aside.</p><p>Far away in Camelot a dragon stirs under the castle, restless."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Adventures in Solitude

**Author's Note:**

> This is a prequel to the first ficlet I posted in this 'verse--a pre-pre-prequel, even, because it's going to take a while for the story to arrive at where the ficlet left off. Merlin and Arthur have some independent paths to walk until they get there, so this particular fic is a gen-ish canon divergence AU more than anything.
> 
> I should say that there, ah, might be some angst along the way.
> 
> Eternal thanks to my beta [agedsolarwhisk](http://archiveofourown.org/users/agedsolarwhisk/pseuds/agedsolarwhisk), who provided lots of encouragement and hand-holding.

“Mom wonders if I should leave,” Merlin says, and looks up at the leaves of the tree she’s leaning against.

Will tenses next to her, and when Merlin glances at him, his face is twisted into a scowl.

“Leave where?” Will demands, eyes fierce. “Where will you go? To Cenred’s court, where they will enslave you for your powers? Or to Camelot, where you’ll be burnt at the stake?”

Merlin shrugs. She picks up a flower and tears at its petals. Loves me, loves me not. Will burn me, will burn me not. It’s a gamble, but so is staying here. She’s never felt fully welcome, but now the people are getting suspicious, and bolder in their disapproval.

“Camelot has Gaius,” she says. “My uncle. He can help, maybe. Maybe I’ll finally find out why I’m like this, what I’m like this for.”

“Merlin, please,” Will says, turning to her fully. “They will kill you. That uncle of yours will help you learn magic that will get you killed. The king of Camelot is right there, and everyone knows he’s mad with hatred of sorcery. You’ll be completely defenceless—”

“And what am I here, Will?” Merlin interrupts. “A bastard child? A girl who doesn’t know her place? I’ve heard the way they talk, and what they call me. I refuse to be that. I refuse to let them make me into that.”

Merlin would like to blame it all on Tom, old Vera’s son, and on the way he’d boasted of what should have stayed private between them. But really, the villagers hardly needed this latest sin to whisper when Merlin walked past.

Will’s hands clench into fists.

“And do you not think that it’ll be worse in Camelot? That place is full of nobles who’ll treat you as their plaything. They think it’s their gods-given right to have whatever they want. Believe me, I know.”

Will has his issues with nobles; it’s nothing new. Merlin doesn’t think he’s right about everything. Not all nobles can be bad.

But his words echo what Merlin’s mother said when they’d talked in front of the fire last night. _You have your magic, so I know you can protect yourself,_ Hunith said, eyes troubled. _But in Camelot, that same magic will get you killed. Truly, sweetheart, I do not know the right way for us to act._

Merlin doesn’t know, either.

She wants to go to Camelot, to discover new worlds and find why she was born this way. She wants to travel, and to meet new people, and to become someone she can never be in Ealdor. She wants more out of life than toiling in the fields and tending to the garden and bearing children. 

She wants to stay with her mother, and she wants to stay with Will. She wants to prove that she can be what people say she never can be; she can be good, and she can be honest, and she can be like all the others. Just because she has never known her place, too bold and too different, it doesn’t mean that she has to be exiled. She’s done nothing wrong. Why must she flee?

“Let me keep you safe,” Will says, kneeling before her and looking into her eyes. “Let me give you whatever protection my family can bring. Marry me.”

Merlin swallows, feels her heart stutter in her chest. “Will—”

“Please, Merlin.” His eyes are so earnest, so wide in his face. “You know that you’re everything to me. I swear I’ll keep you safe.”

Merlin glances at the mangled flower in her hand.

She’s long known that Will loves her. She doesn’t doubt his sincerity, nor his devotion. He is hers, the way she has always been his.

Is it enough?

She looks back at Will’s face, the tiny freckles on his nose, the messy way his hair falls across his forehead, the full lower lip held anxiously between his teeth as he waits for her reply. He’s had the same habit since they were children, and she feels a wave of tenderness sweeping across her at the sight of it, so familiar and so dear.

He’s been her only friend, and the only one, except her mother, who has ever cared. People have got married with far, far less than that. Merlin is loved, and she loves in return. What more can there be?

Merlin allows herself to spare another thought for Camelot, for the beautiful castle she’s heard so much about, for the glittering court and all the faces she'll never meet. She takes a long, hard look at her dream, and casts it aside.

“Yes, Will,” she says, meeting his eyes. “Yes, of course. Of course I’ll marry you.”

***

Far away in Camelot a dragon stirs under the castle, restless.

***

“Sire, the woman in Lady Helen’s chambers is not Lady Helen,” Gaius says, his voice urgent. 

Arthur had wondered at the interruption—it is not like Gaius to barge into the throne room when the prince and the king are having a private audience. Admittedly, Arthur is glad to be interrupted during a discussion of his marriage prospects.

He really, really doesn’t feel like marrying anyone right now. Or in the near future. No matter how eligible the bride.

Arthur’s father frowns and focuses his attention on Gaius. “You are sure?”

“Yes, sire. I delivered her a tonic for her voice, as she had requested, and I saw a magic book, and some herbs that had no business being there, and, sire…” Gaius takes a dramatic pause. “Her reflection in the mirror did not match her outward appearance. She did not notice me look, but I assure you—”

“What did she look like?” Uther leans forward on the throne.

Gaius glances Arthur’s way, for a moment, and puts his hands behind his back.

“It was the woman whose son was executed two days ago, sire. Tom Collins’s mother. The one who’s sworn her revenge.”

Uther’s countenance darkens. “Ah, yes. I remember her. Very well. She will regret having ever plotted against me.”

For a moment, Arthur thinks his father is about to order him to arrest her, and he half-turns to go when Uther apparently changes his mind. He calls for guards, and lets Sir Leon lead the arrest.

Watching his knight go, Arthur thinks that there will be another pyre tonight. And at the feast, they will celebrate the death of not one, but two sorcerers; another threat against Camelot felled, another triumph achieved.

It is as it must be.

***

“My goodness, Merlin, have a care!” Hunith exclaims the moment she steps over the threshold. 

Merlin looks around the room, trying to see it through her mother’s eyes. Pots and pans are cleaning themselves over a bucket in the corner; a broom is sweeping the floor, humming a quiet melody; and a couple of Will’s shirts are busy mending themselves. 

Merlin’s not half-bad at this housewife lark.

She smiles and hugs her mother, glad as ever for her visit. “I’m being careful, mom. I never do anything outside, you know that.”

“And if someone was to come in?” Hunith chides, smoothing a hand over Merlin’s hair.

Merlin tries not to let her expression darken. “No one does.”

Hunith gives her a keen look, as if she’s heard the words Merlin will not say, but then she only smiles and sits at the table. “I imagine you’ll have a warm drink at hand, then.”

A flick of Merlin’s fingers, and she puts a steaming mug in front of her mom. 

“Is Will out in the fields?” Hunith asks, her voice curling oddly around Will’s name, as usual.

When Merlin announced her decision to marry Will, Hunith didn’t object. She didn’t burst into tears of joy, either. She can’t have seriously meant for Merlin to go to Camelot—she’d said herself that the journey was dangerous for a woman alone, and the destination unsafe for sorcerers. And yet.

A mother is always going to think that nobody’s good enough for her child, Hunith said. 

“Will won’t be home till tonight,” Merlin replies. “I was going to go gather some herbs in the woods. Flowers, too, maybe… This house needs all the decorating it can get.”

“You’ve done a wonderful job, dear,” Hunith says, grasping Merlin’s hand. “It looks like a home now, the way it hasn’t since Anna’s death.”

Merlin nods. When she moved into Will’s cottage—and wasn’t that a strange thing to do—she made it her first priority to turn it from a dark cave into a proper home. Will may have been content living with the ghost of his father and the pale memory of his mother, escaping the house when the weight of their presence got too heavy, but Merlin wasn’t going to bury herself in someone else’s past. She cleaned and scrubbed and tidied and decorated and aired the place until it bent to her wishes. 

She and Will are going to have a sunny future together if she has anything to say about it.

***

Arthur keeps making miraculous escapes, and there are so many near misses in the attempts against his life. 

Valiant kills several tourney contestants with his shield, but Arthur recovers from his wounds thanks to Gaius’s cures. A griffin ravages Camelot and tears apart several villages even as Uther tries to project a semblance of control; Arthur is injured, but he survives, and in the end the griffin disappears the way it came, perhaps bored of the easy prey. Then, one day, Arthur wakes to a bizarre story involving Sophia and his own attempted elopement. Arthur remembers nothing, his father only thunders in response to any query about her, and Gaius is remarkably tight-lipped.

Arthur has grown up surrounded by secrets, and he’s learnt to judge their quality. He knows there are things people aren’t telling him; he’s not sure whose benefits that is protecting.

“I think I must have a guardian angel watching over me,” he says, observing carefully from half-lidded eyes.

Gaius fidgets, and then makes a clear attempt to stand straighter and look unconcerned.

Gaius is a liar in a world of liars. 

The very stones of Camelot whisper of sorcery stirring in the shadows. The enemy is ever-waiting, always poised to strike. Arthur doesn’t know why, then, he’s being kept in the dark.

The thought weighs on him, unanswered questions souring his mouth with the taste of treachery.

***

Sometimes Merlin dreams. 

She could go away. With Will, of course. They could pack their bags and leave—see the world, find some beautiful places and meet a few mysterious strangers. They could go on adventures, and maybe Merlin’s magic could come in useful. She could slay some beasts, and maybe rescue a couple of princesses from a dark tower. 

Camelot and Essetir aren’t the only kingdoms. Cenred would use Merlin for her powers and Uther would have her killed, but there are other rulers, and maybe Merlin could be accepted somewhere. Maybe she could be more than she can be here. Being married doesn’t tie them down in Ealdor, surely. She and Will could—

She brings it up with him only once, after a particularly inspiring daydreaming session in the meadow.

She mentions it after dinner, offhand. Wouldn’t it be nice, she says. Do you think, one day…

Will grips her shoulders, hard, and stares into her face with the expression of a man whose worst nightmares are coming true.

“You want to leave?” he asks.

“No!” Merlin says, stunned by his reaction. “I just—I thought we could—wouldn’t you like to—”

“Ealdor isn’t enough for you, is that it?” Will demands. “I’m not enough?”

“No—I mean—of course you are!” Merlin says. “Of course. I just—never mind, it was stupid, I was only joking.”

And she was, kind of. But disappointment still burns like acid in her gut, and she doesn’t look at Will as she gets up to put the plates away. 

“Merlin.” Will catches her around the waist, draws her to him. “I love you.”

“I know.” She swallows, and looks him in the eye. “I love you too.”

***

A plague hits, and people die. Good people, innocents Arthur has sworn to protect. Guinevere’s father, blacksmith Tom, is among the victims, and Morgana has braved Uther’s displeasure to disappear from the royal table and spend the time comforting her handmaiden in a bizarre reversal of roles.

Arthur supposes he has always known that Morgana could be kind. She just chooses to be all hard edges, all the time, instead.

“This illness must be stopped, and the sorcerer apprehended,” Uther declares for the third time during this supper alone. His hand is gripping his goblet of wine far too tightly, and his eyes are narrowed in grim focus.

This is Arthur’s king sitting in front of him, not his father.

Arthur nods, averting his gaze.

He has followed the king’s orders and searched every house, every nook and cranny for the evil sorcerer, several times over the last few days. But it’s a shallow game of smoke and mirrors; the culprit is nowhere to be found, and Arthur doesn’t know how to protect people against sorcery. He can only be seen doing something, as per Uther’s orders, and he’s not sure this is actually helping anybody. 

The failure gnaws at him and turns his stomach, making his venison stew taste of nothing. And yet Arthur should try to do it justice; the cook died this afternoon, shortly after preparing the meal.

Then, suddenly, the chamber’s doors open and Gaius rustles in.

“Sire, I believe I have uncovered the source of the plague,” he says when Uther prompts him to talk. “I think it likely that the poison is in the water supply.”

Arthur’s heart soars and he gets up from the table, readily abandoning his meal. 

“I will attend to this immediately, Father.”

Uther dismisses him with a regal nod, and Arthur follows Gaius’s directions to the vaults under the castle, several knights by his side.

An abominable golem awaits them, and Arthur barely escapes with his life. Gaius, when consulted, posits that the creature might be defeated with the elements of fire and water.

So like sorcery, Arthur’s mind whispers. He would prefer to defend his people with a sharp blade, but he will do what must be done. 

When Arthur walks into the throne room to report his victory, Gaius is already there, in a hushed conference with the king. They fall silent at Arthur’s approach, but Arthur has already caught the whispered accusation: Nimueh.

“Who is Nimueh?” he asks.

Uther sweeps his questions away with a wide gesture of his arm, and Gaius stands quiet, demure, obedient as always.

Arthur is so, so tired of secrets.

***

“I know I still speak of you as a child sometimes,” Merlin’s mother says, wistful, “but, in my heart of hearts, I would dearly love for you and Will to have little ones of your own.”

“Another mouth to feed?” Merlin snorts, and waves a hand to undo a line of stitches she has tried to do by hand. 

“I never thought of you as an extra mouth,” Hunith says mildly.

“That’s because you are the best mother in the world,” Merlin says, smiling, and leans over for a hug.

Resting her head on Hunith’s shoulder, she feels not like a wife or a future mother, but like a little girl again. Sometimes, she thinks that the people around her—her mom, the villagers, Will—have become used to the change in her status far faster than she has. They expect her to take her place in that endless dance society engages in, though she would be content to run through the forest, magic playing at her fingertips and the world of opportunities just waiting to be seized.

“You will be a great mother one day,” Hunith tells her, and Merlin shakes her head without committing to an answer.

Will has taken to staring covertly at her stomach every month, hope shining clear in his eyes. Merlin’s relief mixes with guilt when her courses come. 

Maybe motherhood will make her happy, will provide that missing piece of her that keeps her restless. But she doesn’t want to risk having a magical child, dooming them to a life of hiding and fear, and—

And she’s so young, anyway, she—

But Will wouldn’t understand if she’d put it in those terms. He’d think that it’s because of him, that she still hesitates, that she isn’t sure she wants his children.

It’s not true. If she wants anyone’s children, it’s his, but—

There’s still so much to do. There’s no need to hurry; they have all the time in the world.

***

“I’m sorry, Morgana,” Arthur says, stopping a few paces away. 

Morgana is standing at the window, gazing out at the square. Her face is pale and her arms are curled protectively around her stomach.

“He’s just a boy,” Morgana whispers, and her voice breaks on that last word.

The druid boy looked so young and terrified when guards dragged him toward the pyre. Arthur has to fight down a shiver at the memory of his father’s face, as if carved out of stone and about as inclined to mercy. Morgana is right: that boy is just a child. What has he ever done?

It’s not what he has done, Uther said. It’s what he might do one day, when he is a man.

But he might not ever have done anything bad. And either way, justice that is based on killing children leaves a bad taste in Arthur’s mouth.

“I tried to talk to father,” Arthur says, and immediately hates the way it comes out, like he’s trying to absolve himself of responsibility.

He should have done more. Could he have done more? 

For a moment, he’s fifteen again and the smell of burnt flesh fills his nostrils as his men—the men he must command if he can only find his voice—pillage the druid camp. So many died that day, on his watch.

Children like this one. 

Arthur shakes his head, swallows past the bitter memories. He can do nothing to change the past, but right now—

He clenches his fists as he stares at the small figure tied to the pyre outside. 

The king has spoken. This execution is his will, it is a part of the fight against magic, this plague that menaces Camelot every day.

We cannot afford to show mercy to the people who will have no mercy for us, Uther said.

This is Arthur’s king, the man to whom he’s pledged his undying loyalty. The man who has tried his best to defend his people from the threat of sorcery.

But—

Arthur can’t become a king like that. Right now, he’s not even sure he can serve a king like that, and he doesn’t know what to do with this unspeakable knowledge.

“I must go,” he rasps out and crosses to the door.

He hears Morgana call out to him, but he’s already running, cutting through the corridors to the main square. 

He doesn’t know what he’ll do when he gets there; he only knows that, this time, he cannot stand by and watch. This time he has a voice and he must make it heard.

He bursts into the courtyard—

And sees that he is too late.

The fire is already blazing, consuming the small figure in the middle, and the boy’s screams—

Arthur sways where he stands and feels something inside him break. 

“Not again,” he says, heedless of the people around him, of the knights giving him concerned glances.

He knows that, behind her window, Morgana is probably crying. He knows also that, on his balcony, his father is standing tall in silent triumph.

Arthur turns around and leaves the square without looking up at either of them.

***

In the darkness of their cave, The Disir pause in their work and gaze deeply into the pool by their feet. Futures shimmer in the water, flickering in and out of sight. 

***

Merlin’s life begins to crumble on the day when Kanen’s men ride into Ealdor, hurling threats and demanding payment.

“We don’t have anything left to give,” Hunith explains. “We will starve.”

“Then starve,” Kanen says, indifferent and rich and hateful atop of his pure-bred horse.

He rides away, an ultimatum given, and Merlin finally fights her way to her mother’s side, lifts a hand to touch the darkening bruise.

“Mother,” she says, voice breaking. She doesn’t look up when Will appears by her side.

Will, who grabbed her around the middle and stopped her from rushing to defend her mother from the raiders.

“I’ll kill him,” Merlin promises, remembering the way Kanen’s hand struck Hunith across the cheek.

“I’m all right, sweetheart,” Hunith says, rising to her feet. She’s still leaning heavily on Merlin’s arm. “But oh, what are we to do?”

The crowd is loud around them, angry and buzzing like a beehive. They only have a week’s grace to decide on a course of action.

They saddle a rider to go to Cenred’s court and plead their case, but some only spit at the suggestion of royal help. The king has never cared. Why would he start now?

Hunith suggests seeking help from Camelot; if Cenred will not care for his people, perhaps King Uther might be moved to do so. She has a way to secure an audience with the king. Gaius will help. He must. 

“Let me come with you,” Merlin pleads.

“No,” Hunith says, firm. “I won’t expose you to that danger.”

Will takes Hunith’s side, of course, fiercely opposed to Merlin going anywhere near Camelot. Between the two of them, they make Merlin promise to stay put. 

Merlin simmers, torn between rage and quiet moments of hope, until the rider returns from Cenred’s castle, bearing bleak but expected news. Ealdor is on its own.

The ensuing arguments go on for days. What is there to do? Giving in to the demands would mean depriving themselves of essential sustenance; they will not last on the meagre supplies they’ll have left. Resistance would mean rebellion, retribution. Death.

“Well, maybe I prefer a quick death to a slow one!” Merlin shouts when Will tries to argue the point. 

“Maybe I’d prefer you didn’t die at all!” Will replies, grim-faced and unmoved.

They don’t speak for a whole day, during which Merlin goes and joins the resistance. 

She is not the only one who thinks that falling in battle is more honourable and less painful a death than slowly hollowing out from hunger. Desperation prevails over the villagers’ fearful instinct to bow their heads and do what the nobles want.

As Hunith makes her way to Camelot, Ealdor prepares to fight.

***

“A terrible beast has ravaged our town, sire,” the workman says, looking up at Uther deferentially, and Arthur’s heart plummets.

Another beast. Another magical threat. 

Camelot has not yet recovered from the last trials it faced. The people are tired, the knights stretched thin, and Arthur can’t recall another year where so many funerals have taken place. 

He can’t remember when he last saw his father smile except in cruel satisfaction of seeing another enemy die.

“Arthur, you ride at dawn,” Uther says.

Arthur acquiesces and signals to Sir Leon, who is waiting expectantly in the wings.

The beast is terrible indeed. Arthur has never seen one like it, nor would he ever have wanted to lay his eyes on such a grotesque being, deadly and clearly put together by some sort of magic.

Sir Belvedere dies as the rest of them retreat, and Arthur feels fatigue descend on his shoulders, the year of loss and battle catching up with him as yet another of his comrades breathes out his last breath.

When he stands before his father and explains, head bowed, Gaius is there, and he wrings his hands in agitation.

“Sire, I beg you would listen,” the old physician says, appealing to Uther. “This is no ordinary creature. The Questing Beast—”

“It is a myth,” Uther bites out, his hands digging into the arms of his throne.

“It is a portent of ill destiny, my lord, and it last appeared on the night of Queen Ygraine’s death!” Gaius persists, and Arthur feels a shock go through him at the words.

Uther dismisses Gaius, voice tight with fury. Arthur finds the physician later, once the audience with his father has ended.

“Tell me more about this beast, Gaius,” he says, watching the man closely.

Gaius is always the one who knows the most about magical threats. Gaius is also Uther’s closest advisor, and sometimes it seems to Arthur that it is because he knows something the rest of them don’t, something that sets the physician higher than the noble lords of the king’s council.

“Sire, it is said that the beast appears in times of great upheaval,” Gaius says, lines of worry crossing his face. “It is a creature of the Old Religion, and it carries the power of life and death itself. One bite is all it takes to kill, and there is no cure.”

Arthur frowns thoughtfully at the closed door to Gaius’s storeroom. He thinks he hears someone shuffling behind it, but pays it no mind.

“Is there a way to kill it?”

Gaius is silent.

“Gaius?”

“Not without magic,” Gaius says shortly, and surely he must know that the words are treason.

Arthur sets his jaw. 

“If it is, as you say, an omen,” which he’s not sure he believes, “then why can it kill? If we are not meant to kill it, what message does it send?”

Gaius turns away and busies himself with sorting out some bottles on his table.

“I cannot tell you this, sire. I only beg you to take care, and to protect yourself from the bite. The kingdom cannot stand to lose you.”

Arthur gives a curt nod and leaves the conversation as it stands. 

He’s not expecting to have any more talk of fate and portents today, and so he’s quite taken aback when Morgana ambushes him, flying at him from behind a corner, eyes wild and lips bitten to blood.

“You must go,” she says, grabbing Arthur by his jacket. “You have to—terrible things will—I know they will happen, you need to go to Ealdor—”

“What?” Arthur says, grasping Morgana’s cold hands as gently as he can. “Morgana, you aren’t making sense. Where is Guinevere?”

“You have to go,” Morgana insists. “That woman that was here—you should go with her, you have to prevent—”

But just then, Arthur spies the blue dress of Morgana’s maid and heaves a sigh of relief.

“Thank the gods,” he says. “Guinevere, take Morgana to her room. She’s raving.”

“Of course, sire,” the maid says, curtseying and taking Morgana from him. “Come, my lady.”

“No!” Morgana says, her eyes fixed on Arthur’s in disturbing fervour. “Arthur, if you don’t go to that village—”

“Morgana, I know of no village in the case except the ones ravaged by the Questing Beast,” Arthur says, beginning to lose his patience.

“Sire, she means a woman who came here for an audience today, asking help for her village, which is being threatened by a warlord,” Guinevere explains, stroking Morgana’s hair. “But it’s in Cenred’s kingdom, and the king was forced to refuse.”

Arthur nods, his mind already drifting from the topic of conversation to the far more troubling question of how to slay a beast that won’t be killed except, apparently, by magic.

“Very well,” he says, nodding at Guinevere. “Thank you. Look after her, will you?”

“Of course, sire,” Guinevere says, and finally manages to draw Morgana away.

Arthur looks after them for a moment, frowning. Morgana must have nightmares plaguing her again, visions of ghastly events that, Gaius says, are just fevered imaginings of her mind. 

The ever-knowledgeable Gaius, who believes the beast to be an ill omen…

Arthur shakes his head and goes to seek out Sir Leon. This is no time for woolgathering. They have an attack to plan. 

***

Hunith returns from Camelot empty-handed, and the last uncertain hope Merlin cherished crumbles into dust. Ealdor stands alone; no help is coming. 

A precious two days remain until Kanen returns, and Merlin has never known the village to experience such unity. Men and women are arming themselves with whatever they can find—mostly pikes and farming tools. A few people manage to dig out real swords, and Will, finally accepting Merlin’s resolve and possessing his own pride, takes out his father’s old chainmail. 

They are a ragtag bunch of warriors, untrained and unused to bloodshed, but they’re ready to defend what’s theirs, and to lay their lives down for it if they have to.

On the day of the battle, before Merlin and Will leave their house to take their places in the ambush, Will stops her in the doorway and draws her into his arms.

“Merlin,” he says, embracing her tightly. “I love you.”

He kisses her, deep and demanding, the way he usually only does at night, and Merlin clutches at his shoulders, stealing moment after moment from what might be their last day.

“I love you,” she echoes against his lips.

And then they go out the door together, holding hands.

They wait for Kanen to arrive, nerves taut, makeshift weapons at the ready. And when he sweeps in—

The battle turns to slaughter. 

Kanen and his men are vicious, swift, well-armed. They cut into the villagers, scattering their defences, rendering their efforts ridiculous. They laugh as they kill, kill, kill—

Several minutes, or centuries, after the fight begins, Merlin thinks, _we’re all going to die._ She knows it to be the truth, like she knows that the sun will rise tomorrow morning.

And she—can’t.

She can’t watch this, she can’t let this happen, she can’t live or die with the knowledge that she had the power to interfere.

So she lets go.

A massive windstorm picks up around her, growing in power as she screams. She throws up a hand and directs the whirlwind at the riders. She sees them pelted with sand, their limbs unable to resist the gale. She grits her teeth and forces herself to channel still more power, to make them go away and never return—

When she comes to, Merlin stands in a wide circle of dead bodies and abandoned weapons. The storm has settled, dispersed like it never was. Her mother is shaking her, holding her in her arms, muttering her name like a prayer. 

“Mom?” Merlin rasps, blinking.

Her eyes feel like they are scratched with sand.

“Oh sweetheart,” Hunith says, sounding heartbroken.

For a moment, Merlin is seized with the fear of having harmed more than just their enemies, but then she sees the villagers stirring and beginning to tend to their injured. 

“We’re all right?” Merlin tries to ask, but has to clear her throat. “We won?”

“We won,” Hunith agrees, squeezing her tight. “Now, come with me.”

The others make way when Merlin approaches, and some distant part of her mind recognizes that she has revealed herself as a sorceress. But those thoughts fade into insignificance when she sees Will lying on the ground, bleeding from a gaping wound in his side.

“No,” she breathes out, falling to her knees next to him. “No, Will, no—”

Her hands are smeared in his blood from the moment she reaches for him, and she can’t stop touching him, trying to do something, think of some medicinal magic—

But she’s never learnt, she doesn’t know.

“You goose,” Will pushes out past his evident pain. “I’ll be fine. You saved us.” 

“Don’t talk,” Merlin says, frantic. “We’ll get you help—”

“I love you,” Will says, and loses consciousness.

He is alive, but he will not wake, and tears leave tracks on Merlin’s bloody hands as she tries to dress the wound. 

Someone is talking next to her—her mother, and maybe other people. Merlin hears their voices like meaningless noise, and can’t discern a single word.

She follows as men carry Will into their house and lay him down on the bed. He’s still breathing, and hope keeps Merlin awake through the night. 

She will not leave his side.

***

Arthur’s knights manage to drive the Questing Beast a little further away from the city, but this is hardly a relief. They have landed no mortal blow, and another village’s worth of people had to flee to escape the murdering beast’s path. 

“I cannot accept this failure, Arthur,” Uther says, leaning forward in his throne.

They are alone in the audience chamber, but Arthur doesn’t take this as leave to lose his composure, to show his frustration in any outward manner.

It is not worthy of a prince.

“Father, we have done all we could,” Arthur says. “The beast would’ve killed us all if we hadn’t beat a retreat when we did. We’ll try again tomorrow.”

“Do not fail again, Arthur,” Uther says, and there’s a dangerous glint in his eye.

Uther insists on labelling the beast an ordinary threat, something that can be wiped out with enough determination and courage. Arthur has enough of those. What he lacks is magic, and, if Gaius is to be believed, that’s what it will take to drive the beast away.

But Arthur can’t think like that, and he definitely can’t voice the thought to his father. 

The people of Camelot grow fearful in the face of this new threat the royal family seems unable to protect them from. Morgana sports dark purple circles under her eyes, betraying her lack of sleep, and Guinevere’s sweet smiles seem strained. The knights take their cues from Arthur, because Arthur tries, at least, to seem like he knows what he’s doing, like the beasts’s endurance doesn’t bother him, doesn’t make him feel lost and hopeless.

Arthur swears that he will put this to rights. He will rid Camelot of the Beast, he will restore order to the land, and he will find a way to soothe Morgana’s fears.

Whatever it takes.

***

“Merlin, please,” Hunith says, tears in her eyes. “People saw you doing magic. The word is bound to spread. It’s not safe for you anymore. You have to go.”

“I’m not going anywhere without Will,” Merlin says, wiping a cool cloth across Will’s forehead.

“Merlin, sweetheart, Will is—” Hunith takes a breath, tries again. “Will wouldn’t want you to put yourself in danger for him. You have to go, Merlin. Leave while you can.”

“I’m not leaving him,” Merlin says for the thousandth time in days. 

It is so clear in her mind, like all her thoughts have frozen into sharp shards of crystal. Amid the stillness, only the essential truth remains: she’s never, never abandoning Will like this. 

While he still lives—

Merlin forces from her mind the fears of how short that time might be.

He has not woken since the first day, nor stirred except in pain. He is not getting better. She can see that. She is not stupid, nor struck dumb with grief, no matter what they say. 

She is not leaving him.

“Merlin, please,” Hunith says.

Merlin dips the cloth back in the basin and strokes Will’s pale cheek.

“I love you,” she whispers to him, leaning close, once Hunith is gone. “I loved you all the time we were together, and I never wanted to leave you. I wouldn’t have left you, you didn’t have to fear. And I’m not leaving you now. Just come back to me, Will, and we’ll be together. Always.”

She bites her lip against the fresh wave of tears threatening to fall.

“We’ll have a child,” she promises. “A beautiful boy who’ll look like you. I’ll be the world’s worst mother, but that’s all right, because you’ll be a great father. I know you will. You wanted a child so much.” 

She clenches her hands and bows her head.

“I thought we had all the time in the world, Will. I thought—” 

She stops abruptly as she feels him shift. When she leans back, heart thundering, she sees his eyelids flutter, his mouth move without making a sound.

“Will? Will, can you hear me?” Merlin grabs his hand, eyes glued to his face, and she almost forgets to breathe as she waits for any sign, any gesture at all.

But then his chest falls, and doesn’t rise again. His fingers go completely slack in Merlin’s hand, and he—he—

He can’t be—

Merlin stifles a sob that might also be a scream and backs away from the bed, hands pressed tightly against her face. 

She tries, and fails, to draw a breath. Her vision turns black, and she welcomes the descending darkness. 

What she remembers next is flashes, incoherent fragments of reality that she doesn’t want to call her own.

Her mother, supporting her as they walk.

Someone’s voices, hands, faces. 

Words, questions asked of her, some sort of noise. 

And then she’s standing in front of Will’s funeral pyre, staring into the flames.

She is a widow at nineteen.

“Merlin, I beg you,” Hunith says. “I know this is a hard, terrible time, but now there’s nothing that you can do for him. You must go. Please, sweetheart, before it is too late.”

“Very well,” Merlin says, in a voice she doesn’t recognize. “I’ll go.”

“You will?” Hunith asks, astonished. Then her determination returns. “In the morning, at the break of dawn. I’ll pack your bag.”

“I’ll be here,” Merlin says, without looking at her mother.

She has no plans to sleep this night, and she will not go back to Will’s empty house which has acquired one more ghost.

Hunith leaves her there, by the pyre, and promises to come for her at dawn.

But Merlin has delayed too long.

At dawn, riders wearing Cenred’s colours enter the village.

“We have been told there is a sorceress here of some fearsome power,” says the leader of the Essetir knights. “We have instructions to invite her to King Cenred’s court.”

The villagers’ reaction—the stares and the whispers—make it clear who the sorceress in question is. Merlin stands tall under the knights’ regard even as she knows that this is what her mother feared.

“What does the king want with me?” she asks, as if she doesn’t already know.

As if they don’t all know. Cenred summons sorcerers to his court and makes them his tools, his toys. Their magic is in service of the king, and to refuse is to be branded a traitor.

Hunith catches Merlin’s eyes, that useless packed bag clutched protectively to her chest. Merlin shakes her head, but of course it doesn’t stop her mother.

“Sir, please,” Hunith says to the knight, “my daughter is so young, and to go so far away, alone—”

“It is the king’s will,” the knight says, and his sword glints in subtle menace.

Merlin experiences a sharp stab of fear that pierces the fog around her mind.

“Mother, it’s all right,” she says. “I’ll go. The king’s word is law, and if—please, mother, don’t. I’ll be fine.”

The last time Ealdor rose up in protest, only Merlin’s magic saved them. The village is no match for the forces of a defied king, and if Merlin rebels this time, if she perishes in battle, there will be no one to protect her mother.

Merlin hardly feels alive, and to die at this point would make as little as no difference. But she will not cost her mother’s life.

“It is an honour, to be invited as the king’s guest,” the knight captain says, and looks like he believes it.

“Of course,” Merlin says.

She takes the bag from her mother and hugs her one last time, a frantic goodbye.

“Be well, my child,” Hunith says, and she cannot hide the way her hands shake.

“You too, mother.”

Merlin isn’t sure she’ll ever see her mother again.

“Why the long face?” the knight captain asks as they ride off. “I thought your kind loved to show off your sorcery. And you should be proud, shouldn’t you? You’re summoned on the special invitation of the Lady Morgause.”

***

On the Isle of the Blessed, Nimueh tilts her head to the side as she spreads her hands on a stone altar.

“Interesting,” she whispers, and then quirks her mouth up in a grin. “Well, Uther, you never knew this was coming, did you?”


End file.
